​Heidi Parkes: Soft Magic invites us into the tactile realm of Heidi Parkes, a renowned quilter, mender, and educator who has been dedicated to the textile medium since she was a student at the Art Institute of Chicago. She is well-known her delicate hand stitching and improvisational quilting techniques. This exhibition highlights Parkes’s profound connection to textiles, tracing her journey from the early stages of her craft to her most recent works. 

For Parkes, quiltmaking can cast a spell, influencing real life. By drawing on principles of sympathetic magic and the law of attraction, she combines material significance, diagrams, labor, repetition, artifacts, and symbols to create powerful narratives. Her work often resembles an evidence board, as she filters her genuine and tender aspirations through a lens of abstraction, inviting viewers in while keeping her privacy intact. This heartfelt act of creating is a long-standing tradition in quiltmaking, as exemplified by Parkes’s baby quilt, which her grandmother Marion Montgomery (Mimi) coordinated, with contributions from the women in their family. 

Parkes’s textiles undergo hand-stitching at nearly every stage, including piecing, applique, embroidery, and quilting, to achieve the softness that defines her quilts. Her compositions are inspired by drawing, collage, and painting. She often sketches on the floor and brings those ideas to life during meetings, traveling, or amid marathon television sessions. For Parkes, the quiltmaking process naturally integrates into her life, occurring whenever and wherever it’s most convenient. 

Her lighthearted approach acknowledges the fleeting nature of everyday life, striving to create beauty reflecting the stresses of daily existence. This “soft magic,” a term she uses to describe her artistic process, embodies her belief that if she can forge beauty amidst imperfect circumstances, perhaps a beautiful life is achievable within our human limitations—without the luxury of redos, endless time, or limitless funding. 

In the spirit of her practice of inclusion and generosity, this exhibition features works by artists who have significantly impacted Parkes, including professor Diana Guerrero Macia from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC); fellow quilters Amanda Nadig, Shawna Doering, and Vanessa Freund-Baden; and her Soft Bulk collaborators and dear friends, Zak Foster and Luke Haynes. 

The Wisconsin Museum of Quilts & Fiber Arts is honored to present Heidi Parkes: Soft Magic, the artist’s mid-career retrospective.